The strategy we are (going to be) using at the moment, based on existing kill videos, is getting the Bouncing Orb coil highest on energy, followed by leveling the static shock. The issue we seem to be faced with is that both static shock and bouncing orbs are hitting us during intermission far harder than I had expected. At one point we had 6 persons stacked up on near full HP to soak a static shock, and lost 3 people which each took a give or take 500k HP hit from this (try 18 for those checking logs).

Note that we have all coils at around 90 energy or higher (none leveled) when we go into the intermission, so likely this is the source of the high damage output, but I do not see any way around that. Healing setup is more or less resto shaman, mistweaver, resto druid, disc priest (x2 at times), holy pala (x2 at times). During intermission we assign paladin and disc priest to solo heal a 6 man coil platform, and resto druid + mistweaver healing one side, shaman and disc priest other side. Classes with high defensives are assigned to the solo heal coil platforms.

Static shock solo soaking seems fairly hard on 25 man (atm only paladins, mages, hunters can solosoak if they have immunities up - high dmg mitigation classes like locks are getting hit for 1.4mil through 40% dmg reductions).

Defensive usage at the proper times is poor at the moment, but this can be fixed with more experience on when damage spikes is incoming.

Any tips are much appreciated, including if we do the leveling of coils incorrect.

The strategy we are (going to be) using at the moment, based on existing kill videos, is getting the Bouncing Orb coil highest on energy, followed by leveling the static shock. The issue we seem to be faced with is that both static shock and bouncing orbs are hitting us during intermission far harder than I had expected. At one point we had 6 persons stacked up on near full HP to soak a static shock, and lost 3 people which each took a give or take 500k HP hit from this (try 18 for those checking logs).

Note that we have all coils at around 90 energy or higher (none leveled) when we go into the intermission, so likely this is the source of the high damage output, but I do not see any way around that. Healing setup is more or less resto shaman, mistweaver, resto druid, disc priest (x2 at times), holy pala (x2 at times). During intermission we assign paladin and disc priest to solo heal a 6 man coil platform, and resto druid + mistweaver healing one side, shaman and disc priest other side. Classes with high defensives are assigned to the solo heal coil platforms.

Static shock solo soaking seems fairly hard on 25 man (atm only paladins, mages, hunters can solosoak if they have immunities up - high dmg mitigation classes like locks are getting hit for 1.4mil through 40% dmg reductions).

Defensive usage at the proper times is poor at the moment, but this can be fixed with more experience on when damage spikes is incoming.

Any tips are much appreciated, including if we do the leveling of coils incorrect.

And monks, rogues, shadowpriests.... make sure your players actually understand how their class works. That seems like the first issue.

Locks can solosoak as well with dark bargain but they need a considerable amount of healing afterwards.
Don't really know what you have roster wise at your disposal but in general - the first static on a platform should be pretty easy to handle as you have about ~8 seconds to get together after the bolts. For the second one you only have 4 seconds between the static going off and the bolts. Use raid cooldowns when you walk together to soak - Anti magic zone, smokebomb, disc crap, devo aura, rallying cry and such.
Also important is handling the diffusion adds - cc them with stuns and knockbacks.

correct, I failed to list a fair few solo options there. The main reason why we did not focus on solo-soaking was the impression I had that on intermission one, due to coils not being leveled, it would have still been relatively easy to soak the damage with a cd up (devotion aura or barrier for instance). Likely switching to a tactic then that puts the classes that can solo-soak by themselves and all classes that can't together (as we were planning on doing on intermission 2 due to more static shocks going out.)

Locks can solo soak and even though I haven't done this fight on Heroic I'm betting that they should do so. It's just so much easier if you minimize the number of people who have to deal with Static Shock and thus can deal with everything else going on. I've heard also that everyone in a corner should generally know what other people are capable of so Vent chatter can be reduced by not having to call out everything for each corner. Know that lock next to you can solo soak so you can immediately move onto the next item on the list.

When the first intermission happens, depending on your dps you'll probably have the static shock conduit ~50-90 energy. However, as a side effect of the intermission, the level is also increased by 1 for its duration(after the Intermission the level stays increased but the energy falls to 0). This means the static shock hits for over 3.2 million damage(for example if the Static Shock platform is at 90% energy you'll be hit by a 3.8 million dmg Static Shock).

Note that while many classes cannot solo soak, they can survive with some help that doesn't put your raid at risk. For example, while a Warrior cannot solo soak if he gets it, he can pop his defensive cds+ other people popping immunity in his Static will split the dmg enough to allow him to survive. If you check our kill(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMRAox_qCUU) at 3:41 Kreps gets the Static Shock and he soaks it taking no dmg with his defensive cds, a mistweaver cocoon, a hunter+rogue+mage further splitting.

Note that while many classes cannot solo soak, they can survive with some help that doesn't put your raid at risk. For example, while a Warrior cannot solo soak if he gets it, he can pop his defensive cds+ other people popping immunity in his Static will split the dmg enough to allow him to survive. If you check our kill(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMRAox_qCUU) at 3:41 Kreps gets the Static Shock and he soaks it taking no dmg with his defensive cds, a mistweaver cocoon, a hunter+rogue+mage further splitting.

Locks can solo soak in transition one pretty easily too with dark bargain and their 40% CD. Pop bargain as soon as you get the shock, then your 40% with 1 sec to go. Means the initial shock is reduced by 40% and almost all of the DoT too! With healthstone/selfheals and nether ward they need next to no healing for this.

What we ended up doing was for Transition 1, put everyone who can do a shock by themselves spread across three sides. Then everyone who can't, on one corner. (Luckily for us, this was a 6-6-6-7 even spread). This makes it easier for the one group because they always know to run back and group up after each static shock is out. The other platforms know they never have to unless somehow a player gets it twice. Melee on all corners just stay in the middle the whole time, as they cannot be hit by diffusion.

Transition 2, we have a 4-4-17 split, each small corner needs some classes that can root stuff plus one healer and whoever else. Those guys have to snare their diffusions off to the side until the whole thing ends. This saves on group damage. The large platform, again, the melee sit in the middle, and everyone else have spread out to predefined spots. The most each corner can have for bouncing bolts is 4, so you should always have enough. The odds that a helm and 4 spawning on the same side are very small.

All in all, this made our inconsistent transitions much more solid, and got us into P3 more often. Static Shock for the non-solo soak corner in Trans1 is laregly a non-issue with 7 people. In Trans2, 17 people soaking means basically zero damage going out. If your DKs want to take Purgatory, I would say go ahead :P Small personals are more than enough with 7 are grouped up.

Many thanks for the multitude of tips, especially the one stating that melee can stack up in the center of a coil platform on intermission as they cannot get targetted by diffusion chain (this was new to us).

Originally Posted by fangless

Transition 2, we have a 4-4-17 split, each small corner needs some classes that can root stuff plus one healer and whoever else. Those guys have to snare their diffusions off to the side until the whole thing ends. This saves on group damage. The large platform, again, the melee sit in the middle, and everyone else have spread out to predefined spots. The most each corner can have for bouncing bolts is 4, so you should always have enough. The odds that a helm and 4 spawning on the same side are very small.

May I ask what classes you brought to those platforms of 4 in phase 2? Currently thinking along the lines of (for our setup) rogue - monk - paladin - feral, as all of them can solosoak and have fairly extensive speedboosts to counter helm of command (in addition to lock gateways being placed) while getting bouncing bolts.

In phase 3 the lightning orbs start coming out at 30 second intervals. As we only have 2 deathknights this likely means that after a while (i.e. if one of them dies) we start losing control over grips. Is it game over then or is it possible to, like on normal, have the 8 ranged move into melee range of boss the moment they spawn, and mass aoe them down with stuns?

This leaves out DKs, healing priests, warriors and shamans to soak.
What we do to save these people is have the rogues, mages and monks in the same quadrant help them soaking (rogues via feint + cheat death, mages and monks via one of their immunities) and throw them a few cooldowns (a smokebomb is enough usually, plus whoever has it uses their personals) if it's on the first one. If it's on the second one just about anyone goes into the static shock and uses his immunity to soak, while the target still uses his personal cooldowns.

Your conduit energy seems high too, but that's because it seems from your post that you're 6 healing, while we only ever 5 healed it.

On the 4-4-17 disposition, we have two rogues, one holy paladin and one tank per side. Tanks can't get targeted by overcharge/static shock/helm of command, which makes it easier to soak bouncing bolts.

For phase three, no that isn't possible, a ball jumping does about 200k aoe damage to everyone in the point of impact. You should definitely keep 1 or 2 combat resses in phase three for your dks.

Your warlocks need a cancel aura macro for Dark Bargain, with one second left on the static shock debuff your warlocks should use unending resolve, followed by dark bargain, as soon as static shock goes off, they need to cancel aura Dark Bargain, and cast twilight ward. THey need significantly less healing soaking this way as unending resolve will mitigate the initial damage and the dark bargain tick. Twilight ward also helps mitigate dark bargain damage.

Many thanks for the multitude of tips, especially the one stating that melee can stack up in the center of a coil platform on intermission as they cannot get targetted by diffusion chain (this was new to us).

May I ask what classes you brought to those platforms of 4 in phase 2? Currently thinking along the lines of (for our setup) rogue - monk - paladin - feral, as all of them can solosoak and have fairly extensive speedboosts to counter helm of command (in addition to lock gateways being placed) while getting bouncing bolts.

Our literal groups are mage/mage/rogue/druid healer and spriest/spriest/rogue/paladin healer. I believe the most important parts are having people that can snare for extended periods of time. Those Transition #2 chain adds suck, and just get CC'd the whole time until you get to P3. I suppose if you use tanks on each, that could maybe work too, like the above guy mentioned.

Originally Posted by rumbo

In phase 3 the lightning orbs start coming out at 30 second intervals. As we only have 2 deathknights this likely means that after a while (i.e. if one of them dies) we start losing control over grips. Is it game over then or is it possible to, like on normal, have the 8 ranged move into melee range of boss the moment they spawn, and mass aoe them down with stuns?

I don't think we had any issue with it, though we have 3 DKs, the last one never has to grip as long as the first two don't die. Honestly, I don't know how we'd handle it if one dies. As soon as they jump to melee, everyone is going to get pooped on. If you only have two, you just have to make sure they don't die. With the above grouping strat, I found that AMZ is pretty useless, and Purgatory seemed better suited.

I don't think we had any issue with it, though we have 3 DKs, the last one never has to grip as long as the first two don't die. Honestly, I don't know how we'd handle it if one dies. As soon as they jump to melee, everyone is going to get pooped on. If you only have two, you just have to make sure they don't die. With the above grouping strat, I found that AMZ is pretty useless, and Purgatory seemed better suited.

Very possible to do a wave or two without mass grip - we've done it multiple (although never on a kill attempt). As soon as they spawn make sure melee spread out a bit while still being in melee range. Pop a CD or two, have ranged move in slightly (3 yard spread!) and when they jump in be moving around. Ursols vortex + stuns and make sure if you miss a few that you keep spread. If they all become unnstunned spread and keep moving.

You'll likely have a few people die but that's much better than a wipe. Very important to get as few ball lightning spawns as possible if you don't have mass grip - 8 is doable, 15 is not.